"Everybody"

That most faithful servant of education, the Boston Transcript, last week published its annual survey of 86 colleges and universities whose condition may be safely regarded as typical of all the 780 institutions of higher learning in the U. S. It was with something between pride and bewilderment that the Transcript had to report:

Greater enrollments than ever per capita of population. "Everybody--not most everybody, but everybody--wants to go to college."

In France, 13 out of every 10,000 persons go to college; in Great Britain, 15 out of every 10,000; in the U. S., 60 out of every 10,000.

In 1925 the total enrollment. of the 86 specimen institutions was 253,630 full time students. In 1926 it was 265,564--an increase of 138 students per college.

Higher education is becoming increasingly centralized. About 4% of all U. S. colleges enroll about 40% of the students. The geographical centre of higher education, having moved steadily inland from the Atlantic seaboard since 1880, has crossed the Indiana-Illinois line and is some 15 miles southeast of Urbana, Ill.

The ten largest enrollments: 1926 1925

University of California .... 17,101 16,282

Columbia University 12,643 11,836

University of Illinois 11,810 11,212

University of Minnesota 10,796 10,001

University of Michigan .... 9,587 9,422

Ohio State University 9,377 9,008

University of Wisconsin.... 8,220 7,760

Harvard University 7,993 7,652

University of Washington.... 6,851 6,149

University of Nebraska 6,124 6,105

Other enrollments:

Cornell 5,471 5,393

Yale 4,960 4,722

Washington (St. Louis) 3,413 3,318

Leland Stanford 3,318 3,130

Princeton 2,301 2,263

Tulane (New Orleans) 2,190 2,091

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore) 1,662 1,667

Women's institutions:

Smith 2,137 2,158

Wellesley 1,588 1,599

Vassar 1,147 1,149

Goucher -,050 1,057

Mount Holyoke 1,032 1,024

Radcliffe 1,024 944

Bryn Mawr 482 508

Roger W. Babson, statistician, big-business-builder, efficiency expert, lately declared: "Higher education today is living in a fool's paradise." He represented that most of his business acquaintances viewed college-trained job-seekers with actual alarm. To find out if this could be generally true, President Simon S. Baker of Washington & Jefferson College (Washington, Pa.) made a pilgrimage to Manhattan, where he interviewed employers and employment agencies from J. P. Morgan & Co. and the Carnegie Foundation on down. Last week President Baker announced that, to his great surprise, much that Mr. Babson had said received wide endorsement. President Baker hurried back to his post, to make some changes at Washington & Jefferson.